


Shrivelfigs

by lifespossible



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Christmas Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Potterlock, Really just a lot of fluff, Teenlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:03:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5518040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifespossible/pseuds/lifespossible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock were not a couple, ta very much. They were friends--close friends, best friends. But that was it. Just friends. If you asked John, he’d assure you that was the case. But if you got him on the right side of a couple firewhiskies, well, he might be inclined to tell you he thought it was a damn shame they were only best friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shrivelfigs

**Author's Note:**

> I literally wrote this for Christmas last year but for some reason forgot to post it, so here it is now.

John and Sherlock were not a couple, ta very much. They were friends--close friends, best friends. But that was it. Just friends. If you asked John, he’d assure you that was the case. But if you got him on the right side of a couple firewhiskies, well, he might be inclined to tell you he thought it was a damn shame they were only best friends.

“What do you say, Watson?” said Mike Stamford, dropping down into the chair next to John in the Gryffindor common room. “Is this year the year you finally get Holmes under the mistletoe with you?”

John glanced up from the Astronomy chart he was filling out, due the next morning. “Ha bloody ha, Mike,” he said, looking back down at his homework. “You know as well as anyone that we’re not together.”

Mike sighed, settling more comfortably into his armchair. The fireplace was crackling merrily, washing the common room in golden light. There were students spread out all over the room, most either doing homework or studying. Attitudes were relaxed--the Christmas holidays started in a week, and Hogwarts had been transformed with sparkling decorations as usual. What Mike seemed to be most concerned with were the floating balls of mistletoe that students either loved or hated with a passion. Privately, John thought it was a statistical anomaly that he and Sherlock had not been caught under it in their previous five Hogwarts Christmases. 

“But you want to be,” Mike said.

John shook his head, penned in the last coordinates of the star he was supposed to track, and started putting his homework away. “Doesn’t matter what I want,” he said, standing and hauling his bag over his shoulder. “Now get up, you lazy bastard, or we’re gonna be late for Quidditch. And Hunter’ll have our heads. Somehow I doubt either of our families would appreciate that as a Christmas present.”

***

  
It was freezing on the Quidditch pitch, but John appreciated that he could throw himself into something physically. He was well aware that Mike had been pushing for he and Sherlock to get together since at least second year, but John was too sensible to really attempt anything.

Each crack of his bat against a Bludger felt incredibly good. It was like he was releasing the frustration of his questions each time he hit one of the black balls away.

Should he risk his friendship with Sherlock for something as fickle as a kiss?

_Crack!_

Does Sherlock feel the same way about John as John does about him?

_Crack!_

Is John getting tired of his mates’ constant nagging about getting together?

Well, the last one was a bit of a no-brainer, but hitting the bludger clear across the pitch felt good anyway.

Bill Murray whistled as the bludger sailed over his head, watching it as it finally lost John’s momentum and started to fly towards Alexandra Pearson, their best chaser. “Merlin’s pants, Watson,” Bill called, pulling his broom around to face John. “If sexual tension gives you an arm like that, let’s all hope you or Holmes never get the bollocks to kiss already.” 

John blinked, then drew up his bat and started chasing Bill around the field. The other five members of the team stopped, several of them cheering either John or Bill on as they raced around. Violet Hunter, the captain and seeker, looked after them with a thunderous frown on her face. “Stop dicking around, boys!” she yelled.

“Aw, come off it, Vi,” Alexandra Pearson said, ducking as the rogue bludger made another pass at her head. “Let boys be boys. It’s Christmas.”

“And yet we’re out in the freezing cold while there’s a foot of snow on the pitch,” Mike said, flying away from the keeper’s posts and towards John and Bill. Which was a shame, because John had managed to snag the back of Bill’s robes and was nearly winning the midair tussle they were having.

Violet sniffed. “We have to be prepared for all weather conditions,” she said loftily. “It’ll be this bad come February, and we have to play Ravenclaw.”

Mike had managed to get John and Bill separated without any of them falling off their brooms and into the snow. Bill grinned at John over Mike’s shoulder. “I be we all know who’ll be cheering against their house,” he said, slightly sing-song.

John narrowed his eyes. “Stuff it, Bill,” he said darkly.

Bill’s grin was far too gleeful, in John’s opinion. Mike glanced at John, seemed to read the impending resumal of the chasing-with-the-beater’s-bat, and immediately began diffusing the situation. “Vi, you’re as bad as Oliver Wood was; Bill, I’d shut up.”

Violet huffed again, then sighed. “Fine,” she muttered. “Watson, Tucker, get the bludgers back in the chest. Where’s the quaffle--yeah, put it away, Katherine. Locker room, everyone!” 

John pulled away from Bill and Mike and started chasing after the bludgers with Jeff Tucker. It didn’t take long, but both John and Jeff ended up crashing into the snow in their efforts to capture the devilish black balls. They joined the team in the locker rooms, dripping wet, cold snow from their practice robes. John made quick work of stripping out of them and changing back into the school robes he had brought with him.

Around him, the rest of the team talked merrily, excited about the upcoming holiday. Most of them were returning home to their families. The girl’s voices drifted up and over the curtain that separated their changing area, discussing gifts they were giving and where they had found them.

“Seriously, though,” Bill said, voice suddenly louder than the rest. “Who wants to bet a couple galleons that when we play Ravenclaw, Sherlock Holmes is gonna be sitting with the rest of the Gryffindor house?”

Jeff laughed, and Mike didn’t do a good job of hiding his grin. John fixed Bill with his best death glare. “We’re not a couple,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re best friends, blah blah blah. You say that all the time, Johnny,” Bill said, tossing his goggles into his wooden locker, then sitting down to pull on a pair of socks. “But have you bloody looked at yourselves?”

Katherine Upshaw’s voice floated over the divider curtain. “You two are mooning over each other worse than Auntie Lavender did Ron Weasley.”

John scowled, then turned towards his own locker and hauled his sodden robes over his head.

“Aw, come on, Johnny,” Bill said. “You can’t deny it. You two already do all the couple stuff, minus the snogging.”

“Though they do look like they’ve been up to that sometimes as well,” Jeff said, hopping on one foot as he tried to pull a cleat off of a wet wool sock.

John’s face burned. “We do not,” he hissed.

Even Mike gave him a look at that. “John,” he said. “You fell out of a broom cupboard together.”

The tips of his ears felt ridiculously hot, and John was sure that his blush was bright enough to light up a Christmas tree.

***

  
Hiding in the broom closet had not been John’s idea. The ideas like these, the ones where he and Sherlock ended up invading each other’s personal space for extended periods of times, when Sherlock always managed to pull away right as John got enough courage gathered up just to kiss the lanky bastard whose elbow was probably about to rupture John’s spleen, these ideas were never John’s idea. He didn’t think Sherlock did it on purpose. Sherlock was always too caught up in whatever experiment or investigation they were pursuing to spare much thought to personal boundaries.

This single-mindedness was the reason that, shockingly, hiding in a broom cupboard while their professors were standing right outside the door was not among either the most dangerous or the scariest things John had done.

(The scariest might have been when Sherlock had dove into the lake in the middle of the night. Sure, the giant squid was friendly, but in the dark, who’s to say it would think Sherlock wasn’t a really long, awkward fish? Ridiculousness aside, John had gone for chilly swim after him. The most dangerous was probably the multiple (also midnight) trips into the Forbidden Forest. _It’s called the Forbidden Forest for a reason, Sherlock,_ he’d hissed.)

The broom cupboard was, however, smaller than any other of the cramped spaces they’d managed to occupy over their four years. It shouldn’t have been, given that they’d used it just the year before to escape some seventh year Slytherins Sherlock had managed to piss off with his deductions, but the combination of what seemed to be more cleaning supplies and the growth spurt Sherlock was going through made it seem immeasurably smaller.

Their chests had only a scant inch between them. Their legs were tangled hopelessly together, and John was incredibly aware of the heat where Sherlock’s legs touched his. Sherlock wasn’t helping matters, either, contorted as he was so that he could press his ear to the door and listen to the conversation going on outside the door. His head was all but on John’s chest, and in the darkness, the smell of his hair seemed more evident than usual. (Soap and whatever they used to pickle ingredients for potions, with just a little bit of beeswax and something that was undeniably _Sherlock_ ). 

John cleared his throat. “Remind me again what we’re doing here,” he breathed out, not wanting to alert the teachers outside their door of their presence.

“Alison Mathers asked me to find out if her girlfriend was going ‘round behind her back with the Hufflepuff Quidditch captain,” Sherlock said, not moving away from the door.

John was quiet for a moment, digesting this. “Well, that’s rather...”

“Mundane,” Sherlock murmured.

“I was going to say boring,” John whispered, raising an eyebrow that Sherlock surely couldn’t see in the dark. “Why’d you take it, then?”

Sherlock shrugged, and his shoulders brushed John’s ribs. “She said she’d do my Ancient Runes homework for the rest of term,” he said.

John blinked. “But you’ve known ancient runes since second year.”

He couldn’t see it, but John was fairly certain that Sherlock rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t mean I want to do the homework.” John could practically hear the exasperated _John_ that should have been tagged to the end of the sentence. “Besides, Alison is unusually adept at mimicking other people’s handwriting. It would be excellent practice for her.”

John couldn’t help but snort a little at that, despite their need to be quiet. “So what are we doing here? Trying to see if her girlfriend actually is cheating?”

Sherlock most surely rolled his eyes again. “Please. I knew she was cheating within ten minutes. I just need proof of it. And if these professors would ever move, I’d be able to get some.” The last sentence came out more as a snarl than anything else.

John bit back a snicker, then tried to reposition himself so that the brooms digging into his back weren’t knocking against the bruise he had from when Mike had knocked him off his broom earlier that week at Quidditch practice. Instead of becoming more comfortable, he knocked into Sherlock’s head, which made Sherlock hiss and rear up. Their legs had been manageably tangled while they were both still, but the sudden movement made them twist together and pitch forward. Suddenly, it was much brighter, stone floor was hard against John’s back, and Sherlock was lying on top of him, their faces with very little space between them.

They were still for a few moments, in shock. The professors had apparently moved before their tumble; not a soul was in the corridor but the two of them. Sherlock blinked down at John, who stared, his mouth slightly open, back up. They were quiet for another moment, then John thought, _Fuck it_. He started to raise his head, and he could have sworn that he saw Sherlock’s eyes flutter, but suddenly--

“Oi! Watson! Holmes! What’s happening here?”

John dropped his head back onto stone floor, groaning as several members of his Quidditch team came running up.

“Oh my god, were you two making out in the broom cupboard?” Alexandra’s voice was saying. “Oh my god, they were making out in the broom cupboard!”

Sherlock was up and off of John in a split second, straightening his robes and scowling fiercely. “We were _not,_ ” he said vehemently. Then he was stalking down the corridor, pushing between a pair of second years that had been walking past. “You aren’t going to bring your potions mark up by appealing to the professor’s good side,” Sherlock snarled at one of them. “Use the little pea of a brain you have and actually study, why don’t you?” Then he was off again, his footsteps echoing off the walls as he walked away.

Bill whistled. “I can see what you like in him, Watson.”

John threw an arm over his face, hiding his burning cheeks. “Shut up, Murray.”

***

  
“That was one time,” John insisted. “And it was for a case!”

Katherine rolled her eyes. “Those cases. Do you do anything else together?”

“Come off it, Kath!” Alexandra said, coming around from the other side of the curtain and plopping down onto the bench. “They do _everything_ together. Including use the bathroom.”

“We do not!” John said indignantly. Katherine and Alexandra both arched an eyebrow at him. John looked between them, baffled. “We don’t!” he insisted.

Jeff frowned. “You _did_ tell him the password to prefect’s bathroom, John.”

John scowled again. “It was--”

“For a case,” the locker room chorused. Not a single team member gave him a believing look.

“Honestly, if I didn’t share a room with Johnny here, I’d be convinced Sherlock was permanently moved into the Gryffindor tower, he’s there so much,” Bill said, as Mike and Jeff laughed in agreement.

***

  
It was something like the second week of classes. John was still walking around in a state of awe. If not for the proof of incredible classes and the wand in his hand, John wouldn’t believe that he was a wizard capable of things like learning to turn into a cat or making object fly around the room or brewing a potion that could put a person to sleep for the rest of their lives. In fact, it hadn’t really become real until he had woken up the morning after the sorting ceremony, still in his comfortable four-poster bed with four other boys snoring around him that he’d been able to admit it wasn’t all a crazy, incredible dream.

John blamed this as the reason that when he walked into his room, he didn’t immediately recognize the Ravenclaw boy sitting on his bed. The boy had looked up when he walked in, and was now studying John intently. Instead of doing something sane, like shouting, John blinked dumbly and tried desperately to figure out if it was possible for someone to climb up the tower and in through the window.

As if he could read John’s thoughts, the boy rolled his light bluish-greenish-greyish (John would never quite manage to decide what color they were) eyes. “Don’t be an idiot,” the boy said, sliding off John’s bed. “I heard some other students say the password. Didn’t even try to keep their voices down. I’m surprised the common room isn’t crawling with students from other houses. I’m sure I’m hardly the first. Still having family problems then? Based on your sister’s handwriting I can say that she’s projecting her anger at herself onto you. She thinks you steal all your family’s attention enough already, being magical is just the icing on the cake.”

John blinked as the boy’s speech slammed into him like a tidal wave. He looked down at Harry’s letter, crumpled in his fist, then back up at the boy. “It was Sherlock, right?” he asked slowly, now remembering the curly-haired boy that had charged into his compartment on the train, given a monologue on how John’s being a wizard had turned his family into a circus that John had been relieved to escape from, given his name and then disappeared back out into the train.

“Sherlock Holmes,” the boy agreed. He stuck his hand out to John.

In the moment when John could do nothing but stare hopelessly at the impossible boy sitting right in front of him, Sherlock’s confidence seemed to waver. Unsureness flickered across his baby-ish face, and he started to pull his hand back. John, seeing this and not wanting to lose the opportunity, jerked out and grabbed Sherlock’s hand. A tad overzealous, John ended up knocking their heads together, making both of them gasp and drop each other’s hands anyway.

“Sorry,” John said. He rubbed his forehead with his right hand and stuck out his left. “John Watson.” Sherlock looked at him through narrowed eyes, as if re-thinking his choice to choose John’s bed to sit on. “I promise I don’t always headbutt people as a greeting,” John said hopefully.

Sherlock’s face did a funny thing, like he was trying not to burst into a smile and instead made his face grimace. The grimace turned into a shy little grin, though, and Sherlock took John’s hand. “Well, John Watson, I can already tell you’re going to need my help with Transfiguration, if the notes you left on your bed are any indication. Even being Muggle-born is no excuse for not being able to turn a matchstick into a needle.”

It must have been the end of the first month of term when people stopped questioning Sherlock’s presence in the Gryffindor common room. By Halloween, the prefects stopped trying to keep him from finding out the passwords. Before the holidays the Fat Lady was incredibly fond of Sherlock, and he always knew the new passwords first. 

(John was still convinced Sherlock scaled the side of the tower sometimes just because he was bored.)

***

  
“Is this team up on John day or something?” John said angrily, yanking his jumper over his head.

“If you would just admit that you’re in love with him and plant one on him, we’d all be able to call it a day and go about our merry business,” Bill said, clapping him on the back.

John scowled and shook Bill’s hand off as the girls tittered. “I’m ignoring all of you,” he announced as he sat on the ground and started yanking at his cleats and socks. Mike gave him a sympathetic look as the discussion continued on without John.

“When d’you reckon John fell, Bill? It had to be at least second year.”

 _Wrong_ , John thought, tugging on the knot in his shoelace.

“Please, it was definitely love at first sight.”

 _Wrong_ , John thought, throwing the cleat into his locker with a bit more force than was strictly necessary.

“No no no, Sherlock was all baby-faced then. It had to have been last year, when he got all tall and cheekbone-y.”

 _Wrong_ , John thought, as his socks made two wet thuds into the locker to join his cleats.

***

  
It was fourth year.

John raced into the Hospital Wing, blood roaring in his ears. He scanned the beds that lined the long hallway, and finding the right one, stomped over.

“John,” Sherlock said, catching sight of him and sitting up. “Thank God you’re here, would you please tell them--”

“You,” John snarled, shoving Sherlock back down. “ _Complete_. Idiot.” Sherlock stared up at him, plush mouth hanging open in shock. “You are the most idiotic person I’ve ever met. Why am I friends with you?” John said. Every muscle in his body was drawn tight, quivering as he forced himself not to add to Sherlock’s many bruises by strangling him. 

Sherlock was still staring at him, light eyes wide. Realizing John was waiting for him to answer, he clicked his jaw shut. “I,” he started, then paused. He looked down at his hands, where his long fingers twisted the white sheets of the hospital bed he was lying in. “I don’t know,” he said softly, refusing to look up.

John stared at Sherlock’s curls, the fiddling of his fingers, and regretted the three sentences he’d said as he’d walked in. “Oh, fuck,” he said, collapsing down into the stool by the bed and scrubbing his hands over his face. He held them there, blocking out the light of the room. “I’m sorry,” he said from behind his hands. “I didn’t mean that.” 

Sherlock didn’t respond, and when John looked up, Sherlock was still staring down at his hands.

John reached over and put his own hands over Sherlock’s, saving the sheets from any more twisting. The other boy’s hands stilled, but he still would not look up. “Sherlock,” John insisted. 

Sherlock looked at him out of the corner of his eye, and John counted that as a victory. He sighed and sat back, pulling his hands away. “Tell me what happened, would you?”

Sherlock pursed his lips, but after a few moments, started telling John about his adventure in the the tallest tower in the whole of the castle (and how he had managed to fall out of it). As he talked, the timbre of his already-low voice rising and falling, John could barely pay attention. He was still riding the wave of concern and anger and _fear_ that had overtaken him when he had walked out of History of Magic and given the note that Sherlock had been urgently taken to the Hospital Wing.

The longer Sherlock talked, the longer John thought, and the more he came to realize that Sherlock was more to him than a friend, and that the moment when Sherlock had said _I don’t know_ had been scarier than finding out he was laid out in the Hospital Wing with a ridiculous amount of broken bones. Because John was suddenly becoming aware that he was hopelessly, irrevocably in love with his best friend, and _bloody hell_ , if John had realized it, how could Sherlock not know? Sherlock knew everything, but he couldn’t fathom why John was his friend, even after four years of unfailing loyalty.

The thought made John’s heart ache afresh. If Sherlock didn’t even know how they could be friends, how could he ever dare to try and bring their friendship to a romantic place?

“It’s really--” Sherlock’s sentence was interrupted by a huge yawn that he unsuccessfully tried to hide. “Really not as bad as Madame Pomfrey is making it out to be,” he finished.

John looked at his friend, smiling as Sherlock blinked blearily while also determinedly sitting up with a rigid straightness. “I’m sure,” he said, then reached out and patted Sherlock on the shoulder.

Sherlock gasped, then choked a little as he tried to stop halfway through. John gave him a pointed look as he passed the tumbler of water that was sitting on the bedside table. Sherlock glared at John, eyes watering. “Shut up,” he rasped out, then accepted a sip of water. 

John smiled at him, and decided that until he made Sherlock sure that he was never going to be without John’s friendship, things were staying exactly how they were.

***

  
“Practice! Tomorrow! Four o’clock!” Violet shouted as the team gathered up their gear. Jeff and Bill started groaning, but John darted out of the locker room and out into the cold willingly. He was more than ready to go back to the common room and bury himself back into his homework.

He’d been walking for a bit when he heard someone run up behind him.

“John!” Mike gasped, jogging around to walk beside him. “Sorry about Bill, mate,” Mike panted, rearranging his cloak and scarf.

John grunted, but didn’t tell Mike to piss off. They walked up to the castle together, far ahead of the yelling from Jeff and Bill and the answering shrieks from the girls behind them. 

Stepping into the castle was like diving into a warm bath. John’s nose was attacked by the scent of holly and cinnamon, along with the undercurrent of the dinner that was about to be sent up from the kitchens. John relaxed minutely, soothed by the castle, before his name was shouted for the second time in ten minutes.

“John!” a familiar baritone boomed. John and Mike both looked towards one of the corridors, from which Sherlock came barreling out of. His curls were windswept, snow coated the edge of his cloak and shoes, and a manic gleam of delight was in his eyes. “Good!” he said, traipsing over and grabbing John’s arm to tug him back out into the cold. “Come along, you’ve got to see what my experiment with the shrivelfigs did--they’ve turned _yellow._ ” Then Sherlock grinned at him, and John decided that there would be nothing better in the world than to go see how Sherlock managed to turn shrivelfigs--which were supposed to be purple--yellow.

Suddenly, though, Mike coughed. Both John and Sherlock looked over at him, and the smile Mike wore was gleeful enough to rival Sherlock’s. He pointed up, and Sherlock and John simultaneously glanced upwards.

“Good lord,” John said, staring at the large ball of mistletoe that was slowly bobbing up and down above their heads. “Well,” he said, looking back at Sherlock. “I guess that means...” But whatever brush off he had planned fell right out of John’s head, because Sherlock was not stepping away like a normal friend was. Instead, Sherlock was still, chewing on his lip and glaring up at the mistletoe like it had personally insulted him. “Sherlock?” John said.

Sherlock visibly shook himself, then looked back down. He seemed to realize he was still holding John’s wrist and let go of it like John was burning him. “John, I--I apologize. You’re under no expectations to--”

And then, it clicked. Like a lightbulb flipping on, John suddenly saw Sherlock’s stammering and refusal to move away, and figured out that Sherlock was in the exact same state he was in, only probably more afraid of losing his one best friend, and finally, _finally_ said, “Fuck it.” And then he grabbed Sherlock’s face with both hands and sealed his lips over Sherlock’s, cutting him off mid-sentence. And it was like everything John had ever wanted--Sherlock’s lips were soft, and warmth seemed to spill from John’s heart and warm his whole body. 

As much as he didn’t want to, John kept the kiss short and gently pulled back. Sherlock blinked down at him, and John waited for him to react.

“Well,” Sherlock said, then cleared his throat. “That is much better than shrivelfigs.” And John laughed, and then Sherlock was kissing him again and John couldn’t think of anything better to ever do ever again.

At least, until, the cheering started. “Go Watson! Finally!” Someone wolf whistled, and as both John and Sherlock turned around to see the Quidditch team standing there, smiling and clapping, John would have bet money that it was Bill.

“Bugger off, the lot of you!” John shouted, then turned around and kissed Sherlock again. He felt Sherlock’s lips curl up in a smile underneath his, and John decided that he wouldn’t need much in the future, not even magic, as long as Sherlock was beside him.


End file.
